Cannot access properties on a populate()'d object from Mongoose? - node.js

Question

This is very odd... I'm using populate() with a ref to fill in an array within my schema, but then the properties are inaccessible. In other words, the schema is like this:
new Model('User',{
'name': String,
'installations': [ {type: String, ref: 'Installations'} ],
'count': Number,
}
Of course, Insallations is another model.
Then I find & populate a set of users...
model.find({count: 0}).populate('installations').exec( function(e, d){
for(var k in d)
{
var user = d[k];
for(var i in user.installations)
{
console.log(user.installations[i]);
}
}
} );
So far so good! I see nice data printed out, like this:
{ runs: 49,
hardware: 'macbookpro10,1/x86_64',
mode: 'debug',
version: '0.1' }
However, if I try to actually ACCESS any of those properties, they're all undefined! For example, if I add another console log:
console.log(user.installations[i].mode);
Then I see "undefined" printed for this log.
If I try to operate on the object, like this:
Object.keys(user.installations[i]).forEach(function(key) { } );
Then I get a typical "[TypeError: Object.keys called on non-object]" error, indicating that user.installations[i] is not an object (even though it is outputted to the console as if it were). So, I even tried something ugly like...
var install = JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(user.installations[i]));
console.log(install, install.mode);
And, again, the first output (install) is a nice object containing the property 'mode'... but the 2nd output is undefined.
What gives?

Answer 1

Finally, I solved this...
I tried doing a console.log(typeof user.installations[i]); and got "string" as the output. This seemed odd, given that printing the object directly created console output (above) that looked like a normal object, not a string. So, I tried doing a JSON.parse(); on the object, but received the error "SyntaxError: Unexpected token r"
Finally, I realized what was going on. The "pretty console output" I described above was the result of a string formatted with \n (newlines). I had not expected that, for whatever reason. The JSON.parse() error is due to the fact that there is a known necessity with the node.js parser when attempting to parse object keys without quotations; see the SO question here:
Why does JSON.parse('{"key" : "value"}') do just fine but JSON.parse('{key : "value"}') doesn't? .
Specifically, note that the JSON parser in my case is failing on the character 'r', the fist character of "runs," which is the first key in my JSON string (above). At first I was afraid I needed to get a custom JSON parser, but then the problem hit me.
Look back to my original schema. I used a String-type to define the installation ref, because the array field was storing the installations's _id property as a String. I assume the .populate() field is converting the object to a String on output.
Finally, I looked at the Mongoose docs a little closer and realized I'm supposed to be referencing the objects based upon Schema.ObjectID. This explains everything, but certainly gives me some fixing to do in my schemas and code elsewhere...